This quotation is taken from Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By. Although written around fifty years ago, I think he’s making a good point that’s extremely applicable today. Mythology, rituals and rites are important parts of culture. I very much enjoyed the novel American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which is a modern take on all this.
The whole set of Wednesday Wisdom images can be found in my Creative Commons-licensed Flickr set.
This maxim, #134 in Baltasar Gracián’s The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence, could be read in an unhelpful way. But instead of reading this as a celebration of selfishness, I see this (especially in the light of his other maxims) as an exhortation to be what Nassim Nicholas Taleb would call Antifragile. Have options. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
The whole set of Wednesday Wisdom images can be found in my Creative Commons-licensed Flickr set.
I’ve decided to resurrect a series I started and then abandoned five years ago called Wednesday Wisdom. You can see the previous posts in the series here. This one is actually a lengthier version of #12.
I’m a big fan of Baltasar Gracián’s The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence. In fact, it’s the only dead-tree book I carry when I’m travelling. People wax lyrical about Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and other Stoic philosophers, but I’ve found none so applicable to modern life as the words this 17th century Jesuit priest.
The whole set of Wednesday Wisdom images can be found in my Creative Commons-licensed Flickr set. All of the existing ones are quotations from Gracián, but going forward, I might mix things up a bit!
